Wednesday, December 19, 2012

The Professor who hated the Internet

Prompt 1: The story starts when your protagonist meets someone from the internet. Another character is a fortune-teller who needs someone to replace him/her.

If Professor Malcolm Tanner  had to name one thing that he truly hated, one object that fueled his scorn more than anything else; it would be the internet. This wasn't because Malcolm was a technophobe, and he had absolutely no problem with the free exchange of ideas. Malcolm Tanner hated the internet because he was an English teacher. The horrid grammar  and repeated spelling mistakes found on Facebook gave Malcolm pause to wonder if his efforts at teaching had made any difference at all. The issue that Malcolm found far more disturbing was the fact that Malcolm's students had access to millions of written works at the fingertips, his students that held less stringent ethical standards could produce a quality English assignment simply by using google, copy and then paste. This was what Malcom truly despised, how could he teach his students to be passionate about writing if they resort to letting the internet do their work for them? As a result, Malcolm avoided the internet as much as he possibly could, using it only to enter grades and answer email. This was how Malcolm preferred to use the internet and his teaching duties were the only reason that he even went online....until tonight.

This was as far as I got on this particular prompt. I will redouble my efforts on the next one

What is this Blog for?

So, if you are reading this you are probably wondering what the point of this blog is and the truth of the matter is that I started this blog because I want to be an author. This is not a site where I share my wisdom on writing, I've learned a lot about writing lately but I would hardly call myself a sage in writing....at least not yet. I started this blog because I wanted some incentive to fine-tune my writing and possibly give you all the oppurtunity to fine-tune your own, this can only come through constant sacrifice and effort.
An amazing photojournlist named Kenn Bisio once said: "You can't do what you haven't been doing" He was talking about photojournalism at the time, how you cannot become a talented photojournalist unless you are willing to do it almost constantly and sacrifice other interests in favor of this passion, but he also mentioned that this wisdom does not apply only to photojournalism, it also applies to music, writing or any other passion that can be fine-tuned into an art.
With this notion in mind, I have started scenarios to share my writing as well as trying various writing promts from this site:
http://www.archetypewriting.com/muse/generators/plot.htm
I wish all of us well in our passionate pursuit of writing!